I’m fine with recognizing partnerships in manners that could be beneficial to society, 2+ people residing in a residence can reduce resource consumption for buildings as well as reducing travel distance which ultimately makes for healthier living situations and less fuel consumption. So even if we get to renewable locally cultivated energy, the amount we need to use is reduced. That doesn’t mean people can’t live by themselves, or live in the middle nowhere on a 5-17 acre farm if they choose, but maintain infrastructure in small areas is just easier.

Marriage confers a number of rights and benefits beyond the financial. Next of kin status. Immigration benefits. Presumption of parentage. Medical decision making. Hospital visitation. Funeral and burial decisions. Right to spousal support. Spousal testimonial privilege…

Technically “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t part of US law. It’s in the Declaration of Independence which is not a legal document in the sense that most people mean when they quote those lines. Maybe the person downvoting is attempting to draw attention to that distinction, or maybe they’re just a dick. Who knows.

The people who know it’s an obvious false statement.

Right because marriage isn’t about religion, it’s about property. It’s about who owns what and who gets what when someone dies. One could point out the historical aspect of men literally owning their wives, and some people (assholes) certainly still want that, but these days it’s all about money. Marriage is a way for rich people to make sure they get to hold onto their partners wealth, even in the event of a divorce or death. It’s a tool of capitol, forced on the rest of us by the leaching class. We certainly don’t need it to love each other. No war but class war.

It’s a semantics argument that’s worked in the past, to some extent. Before the supreme court made same-sex marriage legal nationally, some states introduced “civil unions” as an alternative to marriage for same sex couples. They were often functionally identical to marriage, but since they weren’t called marriages you could get some conservatives to approve them. Not enough to get them passed in red states, but enough to tip the balance in swing states.

They are separate, but the term marriage is what people fight over.

For example the Catholic Church, the largest sect of Christianity’s leader believed that domestic partnerships should be allowed and protected. But the term marriage held a “sanctity” to the church and this they did not believe in marrying them within the religion.

So if you took the term marriage out of the documents, the issue becomes “I don’t believe others should have rights that I have” and even their religion doesnt agree with them. Thus the bullshit of hiding behind freedom of religion to hate/persecute others starts to dissolve.

I get where you are coming from but this just feels like a semantics argument. Just because it’s called marriage in both venues doesn’t mean it isn’t already functionally exactly the way you put it.

It feels like a semantics argument because to a large extent it’s a fight about semantics. Most of the people opposed to gay marriage aren’t fighting the idea that gay folks should be able to see each other in the hospital, or be covered by each other’s insurance, etc - they’re fighting the idea that their religious ritual from their homophobic religion should be required to accept gay people and/or that they should be required to accept gay people as being in the same spiritual state as them as a consequence of their ritual. It’s why arguments against gay marriage are only extremely rarely about the legal rights and privileges granted by marriage but nearly always about things like “sanctity.”

Fully separating the legal and cultural/religious concepts of marriage, including in the language is meant to resolve that by ceding the semantic ground without having to cede any actual rights. You qualify and fill out the paperwork? You’re in a civil partnership. Do whatever rituals you want, argue whether or not each other’s rituals “count” all you want, everyone gets the same rights legally and the government is not in any way saying your rituals are or are not equivalent to anyone else’s.

It doesn’t have too. It is only a violation of said paradox if the religion does not tolerate the existence of people outside of their religion.

And since they have co-opted control over the institution for at least 10x longer than any countrys institution has existed it is an entirely moot point as religion has “earned” guarantees of different freedoms within our institution. So anyone claiming their marriage is actually for a tradition predating religion would also recognize they clearly were not doing so to swear the allegiance to the United States of America’s judicial system that didn’t come about until the late 1700s. They were creating a unity between themselves and their partner in the eyes of those who they ask to bore witness with the expectation that unity existed whether or not a piece of lands government rose or fell. By all means there would be no difference if they replaced the term marriage in our government documents are replaced it with one not “co-opted” by region. A word is meaningless until you put power into it.

Everything you said here I replied to elsewhere. But tldr; Romans didn’t get married, the term was Conubium, or Coniugium.

And if you were talking about the institution of marriage it was Matrimonium, which surrounded the aspect of women as mothers.

The term marriage did not exist yet showing that the term marriage does not matter. Choosing a word over the health/safety and happiness of the common person is pointless.

Terms change, and if it’s for a good reason we should change them. The oldest current governing body is only ~250 years old. Christians have been claiming the term marriage for far longer than that.

Why would you care that they called it a civil union or anything else if the rights were the same? Why should people be persecuted to uphold such, it’s all frivolous. Change the term in government documents, and let people have whatever ceremonies they want and exclude who they want from their ceremonies.

Conserving “Tradition” is an inability to grow.